Nurse. 25 years in healthcare. Not a career politician. Running so that what Washington spends in Louisiana actually arrives — as lower costs, better care, and a fair share for every part of this district.
Lisa Ballay is a Louisiana nurse, community leader, wife, mother, and grandmother who has spent her career bringing people together, solving problems, and getting things done.
For more than 25 years, Lisa has worked in healthcare — beginning in frontline nursing and moving into operations and senior leadership. She currently serves as Senior Director of Surgical Services, overseeing physician practices, clinical operations and healthcare teams across multiple hospitals. Her career has given her a firsthand view of the challenges facing patients, physicians, employees, families, and businesses — and of what happens when bureaucracy becomes more important than the people it is supposed to serve.
She was raised in a military family, spending much of her childhood in a single-parent household. She lived in different countries, attended many different schools, and was constantly introduced to new communities and cultures. Being the new person in the room taught her how to adapt, how to listen, and how to connect with people whose backgrounds were nothing like her own.
She and her husband, an otolaryngologist — an ear, nose and throat physician — from Plaquemines Parish, live in New Orleans.
“I believe some of the strongest leaders are those who can listen first, understand different perspectives, and bring people together. For me, that ability began long before my professional career. It began as a child learning, again and again, how to find my place in a new community — and how to make that community feel like home.”
At 60, I could sit on the sidelines and complain about what isn’t working. Instead, I’m choosing to step forward and do something about it. Lisa Ballay
“I’m running for Congress because I believe the people of Louisiana’s 2nd District deserve a representative who is accessible, independent, accountable, and focused on results.
I have spent my career in the real world — managing people, balancing budgets, navigating complicated systems, making difficult decisions, and being accountable for the outcome. I know that when something isn’t working, you don’t defend the system simply because that’s the way it has always been done. You fix it.
Too many people feel that Washington has become disconnected from the everyday realities facing the families and communities it represents. The cost of living is too high. Healthcare is too complicated and expensive. Small businesses face unnecessary barriers. Our infrastructure and communities need sustained investment, and taxpayers deserve to know that their money is being spent responsibly.
Republicans promised small government. Democrats promised competent government. Neither one delivered.
And people know it. Every year Gallup asks Americans whether the two major parties represent them well enough, or whether a third one is needed. Sixty-two percent say a third party is needed — including a majority of Democrats. That is not a fringe opinion. That is almost everyone.
So I don’t believe people here are satisfied. I think people have been told for so long that the alternative can’t win that they stopped counting themselves. That is the only thing standing between how this district feels and how it votes.
I am running because public service should be about service — not preserving a political career.
I believe we can protect individual freedom while demanding fiscal responsibility. We can support economic opportunity while making sure Louisiana receives its fair share. We can disagree without treating one another as enemies.”
Two parties have been writing the prescription for a hundred years. Neither one has made this district healthier. At some point you stop refilling something that isn’t working. Lisa Ballay
Federal dollars play an enormous role in Louisiana’s healthcare, infrastructure, disaster recovery and communities. What comes back arrives too slowly, and too often stops before it reaches the people who need it most. Fixing that is the job.
Where the money actually goes →Insurance, housing, energy, groceries. Washington writes rules that decide what those cost, and it should be able to say where every dollar it spends actually went. High everyday costs are one reason families struggle to stay, build a future and thrive in Louisiana.
I spent more than 25 years inside this system, and I know where it breaks. Care should not depend on which parish you live in, which employer you have, or how good you are at paperwork.
Source: U.S. Treasury, Debt to the Penny. Change measured between the stated Treasury observation dates (August 20, 2025 and August 20, 2026). Daily and hourly figures are averages.
Republicans promised small government. Democrats promised competent government. Neither one delivered.
Both parties have held the majority. Both have run the committees. Both have written the budgets. And the line on that counter has gone one direction the entire time, through every arrangement of power either of them has ever produced.
I am not going to insult you by claiming one seat in Congress fixes this. What I will say is simpler: the people who built this number are not the people who are going to fix it, and nothing changes while the only two choices on the ballot are the two who did it.
And to be plain, because this argument gets used dishonestly: this is not a case for cutting the people who depend on these programs. Most of what is wasted is wasted before it ever reaches a person — in the administration, not the benefit. Fixing the books is not the same thing as cutting the care.
Federal dollars play an enormous role in Louisiana’s healthcare, infrastructure, disaster recovery and communities. That is exactly why competence matters here. When Washington loses track of money, this district has more riding on it than a state that breaks even — it is not an abstraction here, it is a clinic that never opened.
Here is what that looks like on paper. In fiscal year 2025 federal agencies reported $186 billion in improper payments — money that went out in the wrong amount, to the wrong place, or without the documentation to show otherwise. That is $24 billion worse than the year before. Since 2003 the running total is roughly $3 trillion, and the official figure leaves whole programs out of the count.
Meanwhile the federal government cannot pass its own audit. The Government Accountability Office has been unable to issue an opinion on the government’s consolidated financial statements every single year since 1997. For 2025, only 15 of 24 major agencies earned a clean opinion. The Pentagon has now failed eight consecutive audits.
To be clear about what those numbers are and are not: improper payments are overwhelmingly errors in paperwork and eligibility, made by the government — not families cheating a program. The failure belongs to the agency, not to the patient.
Any business run this way would be closed. Any household run this way would be bankrupt. You cannot ask a family in this district to tighten its budget while Washington refuses to balance its own books — or even to open them.
This is not an argument for spending less on Louisiana. It is an argument for knowing where the money went. Every dollar that leaks out in a filing error is a dollar that never became a pump station, a clinic, or a road here.
Sources: GAO, Payment Integrity: Agencies’ Estimated Improper Payments Increased to $186 Billion in Fiscal Year 2025 (GAO-26-108694, April 2026); GAO, Financial Audit: FY 2025 and FY 2024 Consolidated Financial Statements of the U.S. Government (GAO-26-108073).
Short, dated statements on what’s happening in the district and in Washington. Reporters are welcome to quote these directly.
“I’ve spent more than 25 years in healthcare, most recently as Senior Director of Surgical Services. That means I’ve spent my career on the side of medicine most patients never see — the scheduling, the staffing, the budgets, the authorizations, and the paperwork that sits between a person and the care they need.
Here’s what that work teaches you. Most of the cost and most of the frustration in American healthcare is not the doctor, and it is not the nurse. It’s the machinery around them. Patients pay for that machinery in money and in time. Physicians pay for it in hours spent on forms instead of on patients. And nobody is accountable for it, because it was built one requirement at a time and no one ever went back to ask whether it still made sense.
I’m not going to tell you I can fix American healthcare from one seat in Congress. What I can tell you is that I know where it breaks — because I’ve spent 25 years working inside the breakage.
When something isn’t working, you don’t defend it because that’s the way it has always been done. You fix it.”
“Most people in Louisiana’s 2nd District have no idea their district moved.
In May, following a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Legislature redrew Louisiana’s congressional map. District 2 now takes in all or part of ten parishes — Orleans, Jefferson, East Baton Rouge, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, St. James, St. Bernard, Iberville, West Baton Rouge and Ascension. Some neighborhoods that were in this district no longer are. Some that weren’t, now are.
The election rules also changed for 2026. On November 3, every candidate for District 2 — Democrat, Republican, Libertarian and independent — appears together on one ballot. You don’t have to pick a party’s primary. You just pick the person. A candidate who receives more than 50 percent wins. If no one does, the top two advance to a runoff on December 12.
I won’t pretend a district map is exciting. But rules decide outcomes, and voters who don’t know the rules can’t use them. Before November 3, take two minutes and check your registration and polling place at voterportal.sos.la.gov.
That isn’t a campaign ask. It’s just worth knowing.”
Healthcare costs. The price of insurance and groceries. Disaster recovery. The coast. Property rights. Congressional stock trading. What a congressional office actually owes you when you are stuck in a federal backlog.
Every position this campaign holds is published — all thirty-four of them, in plain language, plus thirteen questions answered at length in her own words.
If she has a principle but not a finished bill, the page says so. You should not have to guess what a candidate believes.
Louisiana’s congressional election rules changed for 2026. Every candidate for District 2 appears together on the November 3 ballot. A candidate who receives more than 50% wins. If no candidate receives a majority, the top two advance to a December 12 runoff.
You don’t have to pick a party’s primary. You just pick the person.
All candidates on one ballot. A candidate wins outright with more than 50%.
A Saturday. If nobody clears 50%, the top two finishers advance. Polls open 7 AM–8 PM.
Every day except Sunday, October 25. Polls on November 3 are open 6 AM–8 PM.
| October 5 | Register in person or by mail |
|---|---|
| October 13 | Register online at GeauxVote |
| October 20–27 | Early voting (except Sunday the 25th) |
| October 30 | Request an absentee ballot (by 4:30 PM) |
| November 2 | Absentee ballot must reach the registrar (by 4:30 PM) |
| November 3 | Polls open 6 AM – 8 PM |
These dates are not for the November election. A runoff only happens if no candidate wins more than 50% on November 3. If someone wins outright, there is no runoff and none of the dates below apply.
| November 12 | Register in person or by mail |
|---|---|
| November 21 | Register online at GeauxVote |
| Nov 28 – Dec 5 | Early voting (except Sunday the 29th) |
| December 8 | Request an absentee ballot (by 4:30 PM) |
| December 11 | Absentee ballot must reach the registrar (by 4:30 PM) |
| December 12 | Polls open 7 AM – 8 PM |
Dates from the Louisiana Secretary of State’s 2026 election schedule.
District 2 covers all or part of these ten parishes:
Not sure whether you live in District 2, or where you vote?
You don’t have to be a political insider to help. You just have to know someone.
This campaign is built by neighbors and volunteers, not a machine, and it has no budget to buy name recognition. What it has is a candidate who has spent more than 25 years building relationships across New Orleans and the Westbank — and supporters who know people she hasn’t met yet.
That is the whole ask. It takes about two minutes, and an introduction is worth more to this campaign than a check.
Ten neighbors, coffee, and an hour with Lisa. You provide the living room; the campaign brings everything else.
Repetition is the cheapest name recognition there is. Signs go up on high-traffic corridors in Jefferson, St. Bernard, St. Charles and St. James.
Greeters at early-voting sites and on November 3. A few hours, close to home, at the moment it counts most.
This campaign is being built by individuals, families, friends, neighbors and volunteers — not a political machine.
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